Leg/Ex – Legislative Explorer for Data Driven Discovery (Just One of Many User Interfaces for Legal / Political Institutions)

Lets face it – legal systems are complex. They are complex for the sophisticated players and even more complex for the average citizen. Complexity is the problem and the question which has been at the center of some of our recent work (see here) is how best to mediate that complexity.

For long periods of time, clients and legal stakeholders have dealt with complexity by allocating human capital to the problem. However, there are other tools/methods that might be employed to mediate legal complexity.

Reducing legal complexity is a question of information engineering and it is a question of design. Legal systems need a user interface such as the one displayed above. They need UI/UX. This is a major thrust of behind design thinking for lawyers and this is will be a major thrust of work (undertaken by lawyers and non-lawyers) over the coming years. Stay tuned!

Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Jonathan Zelner, Law as a Seamless Web? Comparing Various Network Representations of the United States Supreme Court Corpus (1791-2005) in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2009 - UAB Barcelona) < SSRN >